Details of the solar panel investment

I shared details on both the solar panel project and the car before, but let me step back and recap a bit. In October 2011, we added 41 solar panels to our southern-facing roof in southeastern Pennsylvania. Each panel is rated for 230W of Direct Current (DC) so that works out to an array of 9.43kW DC. In our family of four, with two work-at-home adults, we average around 7,500 kWh of electricity usage. So the system may be a bit oversized for our needs — about 125 percent — but we planned ahead. It’s a four-bedroom house so we thought that the next occupants could have at least one more family member and therefore use more electricity.

At the time, we were quoted a price of $5.50 per watt for the project. When you multiply that price times the 9,430 watts of the system, you get the total cost: $51,865. That’s just the gross cost, however. We received a 30 percent Federal tax credit for $15,560 and a state rebate check of $7,100, bringing the net cost to around $29,205. Our typical electric bill for a year had been roughly $2,500, which makes the break-even point around 11.7 years.

Adding an electric vehicle one year later

A year after the solar panels were installed — they generated 13.8 MWh in the first 12 months and you can see the real-time stats here — we opted to add an electric car to our garage. So we traded in an Acura RDX and, after shopping around, replaced it with a 2013 Volt. This was to be our primary car, just as the Acura was. We have another vehicle in the garage, but it’s a rarely driven sports car: A 2007 model that just passed 18,000 miles on the odometer.

Since the Acura was our primary vehicle, we racked up miles quickly. Even though we both work from home, my wife and I are often driving the two kids to activities or head a few miles into town most days for food or other goods. With the Acura we were averaging about $250 per month on gas as a result. Now, with the same general driving habits, we pay a maximum of $50 on gas in a given month.

With the Volt — you can see driving stats for that too — we’ve already turned 7,228 miles in the six months of ownership. That’s normal driving behavior for us: We typically drive about 15,000 miles on the main car. Of those miles, 5,255 have been solely on battery power and the car reports our gas mileage at 125.33 MPG so far. Even though we’re averaging 1,250 miles per month, we’re only filling up the gas tank once — or maybe twice — in a given month. The tank is small too: Just over 9 gallons.

So what does this do to our solar panel payback? It cuts it nearly in half to around six years. How so?

The reduced payback on our investment

Three-quarters of our driving is powered by electricity. Even with the addition of the Volt, which we charge every night, we still don’t have an electric bill. We’re at the point where we’re much closer to using all of the electricity our panels produce, but we’re not there yet. And we’ve cut down on our gasoline expenditures as a direct result of both the car and the solar panel system, saving around $200 per month that we used to spend.

That works out to $2,400 a year in gasoline savings and when added to the $2,500 in electricity bills we’re no longer paying each year, you get $4,900 in net cash flow savings. Divide that figure in to the net cost of the solar panel project and it works out to 5.96 years before break-even. Best of all, the payment for the Volt is slightly less than the Acura payment was, but I don’t consider that as part of the solar panel payback.

There was a recent intangible benefit gained by the solar investment, as well. Just before we bought the Volt, we decided to refinance our home. The appraiser added $30,000 in value to the house just for the solar panel array. That gave us the best possible rate because of our LTV, or loan to value, ratio.

Without that extra boost in the appraisal, we would have had to pay more in fees to get our low rate or simply have a marginally higher rate. I don’t consider this part of the payback either, but it sure helped!

This post was updated at 7:22 am, May 13, to reflect to correct Federal tax credit percentage.

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For starters, there’s the entertainment aspect. My Volt came with a satellite radio trial, yet I haven’t tuned in to it. Not once. I know what the service is like: I was a subscriber a few years back and I enjoyed it. I just don’t see the need given that my mobile device has far more options for music. Options that I like, use every day and have refined for my musical tastes.

For example, when I want my fix of the Beatles — which is nearly all the time — I use TuneIn Radio which has a 7×24 Beatles feed.

It works with any any car that supports Bluetooth audio from a phone, so this isn’t a new technology; it’s just a convenient one made better by the explosion of available mobile apps. But I’m also taking this one step further.

My Volt has integrated support for Pandora and Stitcher Radio on my phone. That means I can listen to my curated “radio” stations or podcasts. And because the apps are integrated, I can safely interact with them by voice or touch controls on the central console. It’s a breeze to skip tunes or give them a “thumbs up” on the Pandora smartphone app even though I’m using the car’s touchscreen to do so. Watch for more of this car to phone interaction in apps going forward.

Entertainment is only part of the story though. My smartphone helps me maintain, monitor and charge the Chevy Volt. I use the OnStar app with both my iPhone and Android phones to get real-time information from the car.

Some of it is simple data that appeals to a stats-junkie like myself: Total miles driven, miles on electric v. gas, miles driven on the current charge, etc… [Note: My Volt's driving stats are publicly available online here.]

Other information is more useful, however. Want to know how much range the car has currently or the amount of gas in the car? No problem. Tire pressures measured on the last drive? Yup, that’s there too.

Even more useful is managing the car’s charging schedule. You’re given three options that you can select while in the car, but you can also manage them remotely from your phone.

Immediately charge is the first, most simple option, meaning, charge the car as soon as you plug it it. Folks that have different electric rates at different times may want to schedule the charge. So you can do that based on the time of day — start charging at 9pm, for example — or you can set it for the charge to be 100 percent by a certain time. Maybe you leave for work at 7am; use this option and the will car dynamically start its charge to meet your deadline.

The smartphone becomes a bit of a remote for the vehicle as well. Using the same OnStar app, you can remotely lock or unlock the car; handy if you walked away and forgot to lock it, for example. You can remotely start the vehicle or honk the horn and lights; helpful if you forgot where you parked. Want to send a route to the car? That’s no problem either. Using the app, you search for directions and shoot the navigation data to the car with the press of a button.

Essentially, the connected car has become a new mobile platform, or an extension of the current smartphone revolution, if you will. A satellite or cellular connection in the car, plus Bluetooth, allows the car to interact on the web while the smartphone is the app platform that powers it. We’re in the early stages of the connected car market, but all the pieces are there for big growth and adoption: wireless technology, voice or touch interaction and smartphone apps to make our cars smarter.

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Cold weather doesn’t make for a happy Volt

One external factor that’s hurting the number of miles we can run on a full battery charge is the winter. Under typical driving and climate conditions, GM says the 2013 Volt should get around 38 miles of travel on a single charge. But like any batteries, those in the Volt are adversely affected by cold temperatures. As a result, we’ve experienced some driving days where we only get 34 or 35 miles on car’s battery and then the gas generator kicks in.

The engine has also turned on sporadically to maintain the battery temperature; even when there’s still plenty of juice in the power pack. I’ve noticed this when the temps drop below 35-degrees or so, which is common right now where we live in Pennsylvania. These few periods when the engine heats things up a bit don’t use up much gas however. The engine might run for two or three minutes at a time.

We’re using more electricity, but still not paying for it

Part of the reason we decided to get a car that runs primarily off of electricity is because we’re creating more electricity than we use on an annual basis. In the last 12 months, our 41 solar panels produced 13.8 MWh of electricity but we only used 7.5 MWh of it. Of course, recharging the Volt’s battery on a daily basis is increasing our electricity consumption. It takes roughly 10.8 kWh to fully charge the Volt, which costs us about $1.18 and takes 10 hours with the standard charger.

Although the month of December isn’t over, I checked our electricity usage to date and found it to be 628 kWh so far this month. A quick peek at our home’s solar energy electricity production show that we’ve only produced 462 kWh of energy, so we’re at a deficit. (Note: Our solar array data is made public in real-time here.) I’m not concerned, however.

We’ve built up enough of a surplus with our energy provider so we’ll simply tap into that reserve instead of paying a bill this month. And the winter months are known for both their shorter days and a lower sun angle, so I’m not surprised that we haven’t created enough electricity to have a surplus. That’s sure to change as the days get longer: Last June our panels produced 1.48 MWh of electricity, or nearly four times that of the current month.

Even though there aren’t too many public charging stations in our area, I have found one at the King of Prussia mall, which is the second largest mall in the country and local to us. Atop one of the parking garages are two spots dedicated to electric vehicles, complete with a pair of 240V charging stations. There’s no cost and we’ve taken advantage of them three times already. By the time we’re done shopping, our Volt battery is fully charged for the ride home.

Savings are looking good

Even though we’re tapping our personal reserve of electricity, we’ve come out way ahead in this first month. It was a typical driving month for us, in terms of mileage, but didn’t really cost us anything out of pocket for fuel. The prior month, we drove roughly the same miles and spent just over $227 in gasoline costs.

This month we didn’t see an exact savings of that figure, of course, however the first tank of gas in our Volt was provided by the dealer. And, as noted, we won’t pay anything more for the electricity used to charge the Volt. If we can fill up the tank once per month — at a cost of around $35 for the small tank — and produce enough electricity from the sun, we will have drastically cut our costs for fuel.

Fun to drive at the same time

Not only are we saving money, but we’re having fun driving the car. I really enjoy it. It’s almost like a game to me: Getting each ride to be as efficient as possible. We haven’t really been limited by the fact that only four people fit in a Volt but it could be a future inconvenience. We have two kids, so in most cases, we’re fine. If the kids have a friend over and we have to go somewhere, either  my wife or I ends up staying at home. If nothing else, it gives one of us an excuse not to be the kids’ chauffeur.

I still haven’t enabled the OnStar account, so I haven’t yet been able to play with the smartphone apps. I’ll do that over the holidays. I’ve also ended up saving myself $10 a month by cancelling my Rdio music subscription and just using Pandora in the car over Bluetooth. There’s a dedicated Pandora app that displays album art and supports the thumbs up / thumbs down rating activity on the car’s touchscreen.

So far there isn’t much that I don’t like in the Volt, save perhaps the many touch buttons in it. All of them are labeled against a white background — at least in our model — and can sometimes be hard to read. Without a doubt, you really have to look the console to find the right button, which can be a safety issue. My way around that has been to make very good use of the car’s integrated speech recognition system, which works quite well for audio and climate controls.

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HOSTS: Matthew Miller (Seattle) and Kevin C. Tofel (Philadelphia)

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• Chevy Volt is a well connected car – Pandora, Stitcher, an app that lets you remotely start the car, monitor charging/energy, etc….
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On today’s show we talk about the brand spankin’ new iTunes 11 from Apple with Alex Layne, Stacey Higginbotham explains why the “Internet of Things” is both cool and creepy, and Kevin Tofel talks about using his excess electricity to fuel his new Chevy Volt.

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Today’s episode of the Commutist is brought to you by TriNet – the cloud-based HR partner helping startups and small businesses manage payroll, benefits, and employer related risks.”

Hosted by: Chris Albrecht and Erica Ogg

0:00 – The new iTunes!

10:44 – The Internet of Things

22:47 – Kevin enter the Volt-age

31:34 – Parting gifts:

Kevin recommends the book Make: LEGO and Arduino Projects: Projects for extending MINDSTORMS NXT with open-source electronics

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My wife and I both work from home, so even though we can rack up miles on our vehicles, most travel is short-range. But we didn’t want to go completely electric for our next car because we occasionally like to take trips to New York City, Baltimore and Washington, D.C.; all of which are 100 or more miles away.

How much was our Chevy Volt

I shared the details and costs of our solar panel project, so it makes sense to cover the Volt financials as well. The car still qualifies for a $7,500 federal tax credit, which can help offset some of the next cost. And that’s good because the base 2013 Volt starts at $39,145. Our particular vehicle has a few options — alloy wheels, a rear camera, sensors for front parking assistance and a forward collision alert camera — bringing the MSRP to $41,935 with destination charge included.

We actually opted to lease the vehicle for a few reasons, so we’re not get the direct tax credit benefit. Instead, the dealer gets the credit and can apply some of it to reduce the leasing costs. Since the Volt doesn’t have a long history of proven technology, we opted to work with the dealer on the lease and after applying some equity on our trade-in, our total payment including tax is $301 a month for 36 months. We also got a 4000W gas generator from the dealer, which was a Thanksgiving weekend perk, so now we’re really ready for the next big storm!

Ultimately, we paid nothing out of pocket, as a result of our trade-in and various incentives that GM and Ally Bank are currently offering. We also opted for 15,000 miles per year — which raises the monthly cost — because the Volt will be our primary vehicle. Another $6 of the monthly payment extends the 36,000 mile warranty to our potential 45,000 miles. Bear in mind that any particular deal you work out on a Volt will likely vary from ours; I’m simply trying to provide an idea of what it might cost.

Is it efficient?

Obviously, it’s too soon to say how efficient the car will be but so far I’m impressed. Here’s a screen shot of the first 73.2 miles we drove, which used 0.4 gallons of gas after the battery was depleted. Note that this data is for two days and the battery was recharged once; GM says you should expect about 38 miles of driving on the battery before the gas generator kicks in.

The Volt uses premium gas, which is currently near $4.00 a gallon nearby, so the 0.4 gallons used essentially cost $1.60. Of course, there are electricity costs involved as well when you consider the need to recharge the Volt, even though we over-produce energy with our solar panels. We currently pay just under $0.09 per kWh — not including any distribution costs, taxes or other fees — and we get paid at that same rate for excess energy.

So the 20.1 kWh used for our 73.2 mile drive would cost $1.81 on our electric bill. That works out to $3.41 for this driving session. Our old vehicle averaged 20 mpg and also used premium fuel, so the same 73.2 miles we covered would have cost $14.64 in gasoline. Note that there are many costs and benefits to look at, both short-term and long-term. The above exercise is just one example to view the cost to travel.

Better bring your smartphone!

Although we got a Volt to pair with our solar panels, I’m impressed with the MyLink system in the car, which is also available in other Chevy vehicles. MyLink is used on the 7-inch touchscreen — the same one that monitors energy usage above — through voice commands and GM’s OnStar service.

My wife and I both paired our smartphones with the MyLink system over Bluetooth, which lets us stream audio through the Pandora and Stitcher apps on our handsets. Both iOS and Android are supported and there’s even a MyLink application for both platforms. With it we can remotely monitor, stop or start the battery charging process, check our fuel level, start the car and much more.

MyLink will also play music from a USB-connected iOS device or from a USB stick. The system integrates Gracenote’s music database for audio file information such as title or artist and can display cover art as well. All of this music can also be controlled through voice. Say “Play artist” and the system will ask for an artist name. Speak it and the appropriate artist tunes start playing over Bluetooth audio or USB.

I like the idea that the car uses a smartphone for connectivity, mainly because I don’t want my connected car to have an embedded connection of its own. That’s just another potential data plan to pay for and there’s no need for it when a smartphone can provide a 3G or 4G connection to the car. I expect more apps to be supported in MyLink as well, although I’ve already streamed music over Bluetooth from my Rdio app. GM is expected to soon add a connected map service called BringGo that stores maps on a connected smartphone and uses them on MyLink for in-dash navigation.

We’re just starting down this road

Adding a Chevy Volt to our garage may make more sense for us than most others. We have excess electricity and we can go farther on that energy for less than the price of gasoline and with our driving habits we may not need to fill the gas tank for 6 weeks or more. I realize that not everyone fits into this category. But I think it’s important to share the details of this experience to help those interested learn more about the pros and cons of electric vehicles… and solar electric energy too, for that matter.

So as we do more traveling with the Volt, I’ll periodically share more of the experience. Until then, leave any questions in the comments and I’ll do my best to address them!

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